


Little flower

by AlexZorlok



Category: Fruits Basket, Fruits Basket - Takaya Natsuki (Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Crushes, Gen, other than that all is according to canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:41:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24510964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexZorlok/pseuds/AlexZorlok
Summary: He's given in to the temptation of seeing her a couple of times before, her back always turned to him, as it is right now. Except this time, he's seeing her up close. Except this time, she turns around and says 'hi'.
Relationships: Honda Tohru & Sohma Kyou
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	Little flower

It’s stupid to walk over here. Kyo doesn’t like crowds; it’s easy for people to bump into him on accident, and, while it hasn’t happened to him yet, he doesn’t even want to imagine the shame he would feel if it did. And pain. And fear.

Kyo sticks his hands deeper into the pockets of his jacket just in case there is any possibility the bracelet would decide to slide down his wrist.

Anyway, Kyo thinks it’s stupid, but he stops in front of the apartment building anyway and just stares for a moment. He only knows what apartment to look for because one of the times that he walked home from school this way, Kyoko-san happened to see and wave at him from the window, an embarrassing nickname slipping from her lips. He felt the heat on his cheeks, then, but the gesture couldn’t make him mad no matter how hard he wanted to pretend it did. His eyes sparkled, and he looked up.

It felt nice to be noticed.

Kyo’s hand lifts at the memory, but there’s no one to wave at today; no head of bright orange hair smiling down at him, and not even curtains dancing with the wind. Kyo’s hand goes down, but he doesn’t move from his spot for awhile longer, just taking the view of the building in. It fills him with a special kind of inner peace, if just for a moment, the one where he can’t seem to worry about anything at all.

His quiet moment comes to an end the moment he notices a head of short brown hair in the corner of his vision. Or rather, it ends a moment after that, when Kyo’s thoughts catch up with his heart, which beats faster all of a sudden, and Kyo quickly turns his head to get a better look at the little girl walking towards the entrance doors.

_Tohru._

Kyo has given in to the temptation of seeing her a couple of times before, her back always turned to him, as it is right now. This time it’s different, with no window glass separating them, and with no blurred visuals of a simple picture. It’s real, and he has never seen her up close like this before. This time is different because this time she turns around and says ‘hi’.

Well, to be more precise, the first thing she does say is:

“Huh?”

Her brown eyes are as big as he’s imagined them to be, but they are way brighter than any picture could prepare him for. She looked sad the last time he saw her, her back bent a little forward, and her head bowed, sitting alone in the quiet room and playing with her hands. This time, she doesn’t look as sad as she does surprised, and Kyo knows that it’s probably because he has been staring at her for what has probably been the past couple minutes. He knows that it’s impolite, but he can’t help it.

He doesn’t realise right away that Tohru has been staring, too.

“Your hair is pretty!” she exclaims, and Kyo is immediately dumbfounded.

She claps her hands together, and she probably doesn’t realise that, but she also takes a step forward, causing Kyo to take a step back. He does that more out of a reflex than out of awkwardness or even caution, but Tohru seems to notice that, because the next moment she blushes, stopping in her tracks.

“I-I’m sorry, it was so rude of me to start without an introduction! My name is Tohru Honda, it’s really nice to meet you!”

Kyo’s first thought is that he already knows her name, although he doesn’t let her know that out loud. Instead, he listens in to the weird manner of her voice, the one that Kyoko-san has already described to him, saying that Tohru sounds like an angel, that she smiles like there’s gold on her face, and that when she accidentally snorts in between words it’s both a scream of an elephant, and a song of a little bird.

Kyoko-san says a lot of weird things, but this is by far the truest one of them.

“What’s your name?”

_Cat_ , Kyo thinks, is what people’s first impression, _Sohma’s_ first impression of him often is. He hears the word in his head uttered with a curious tone of Kagura, or Haru, or a not-so-pleasant memory of the rat’s voice.

_Monster_ , is there, with many more other voices.

“Kyo.” he says, sheepishly, not letting his eyes leave the girl in front of him.

“My mother has the same hair as you! I like it.” she says, and Kyo’s first thought is that he knows that, too.

It’s never before crossed his mind that he probably knows almost everything there is to know about Tohru Honda, but Tohru Honda knows nothing at all about him.

“T-thank you.”

It also hits Kyo that he doesn’t know how to make friends, although this thought has crossed his mind times and times before, whenever he came home from school, and his master asked him about the new friends he might have made. What makes it harder for him is that Tohru, definitely, isn’t quite like anyone else he knows, other than maybe his master, and Kyoko-san.

“I haven’t seen you around here before…”

Kyo almost misses these words, uttered probably more to Tohru herself, than to him. Kyo’s eyes turn to make a quick glance towards the window he looked at before, in attempt to find some of the previous comfort.

“I’m...friends with...someone from here.”

Tohru’s gaze grows more curious, and Kyo gulps. He isn’t lying, technically, although he hasn’t ever called Kyoko-san a friend to her eyes, or even to his master. He throws another glance towards the window, then shoves the hands back into his pockets, one of his feet already reaching to take a step back.

“But she isn’t here today...so I should go home!”

He nods, for some reason, just to add to the seriousness of his words, and it works, because Tohru nods back at him as enthusiastically. Kyo doesn’t see her face when she calls to him the next moment, but he almost knows her smile by heart.

“Come again!”

He really wants to consider that.


End file.
